h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm off back home tonight to see my mother for the weekend. Back on Sunday!

I hope to knock off work earlier this afternoon and have a hairdresser's appointment before catching the train to the airport at 18:17. Maybe I'll write from there ..... she's got a faster computer which we bought her for her birthday last November. I'm going to have to get my head round Windows 7.

Have a good trip.

Thanks

Everything went according to plan. We had a restful weekend, some rain, some sun, only marred by the fact that my sister was rather incapacitated with a terrible sore throat.

Had a bit of fun getting to the airport for the trip home. They decided to start work on the railway lines, and I have 2 level crossings to cross on my way to the airport. I had to take 2 long diversions and was then horrified to see the queues for security checks winding right back to the check-in desks. For once in my life I was cheeky and asked if I could get through the fast lane (reserved for exclusive card holders "by invitation only")

One of the chaps monitoring the queues said I could try. I arrived at the pre-check-in 10 minutes before my gate was due to close.

Got through with no hassle!

Now would someone explain to me what "gate closing" means?

If I had arrived 20 or 30 minutes later - i.e. well after the official "gate closing" time, I could still have joined the back of the queue, which was slowly passing past the final check for boarding, and it wouldn't have mattered when I actually got to the gate. No one is standing there with a stopwatch to check you join the queue for boarding by the given time.

This "gate closing" seems quite superfluous to me, except that it ensures that most of the passengers are actually at the gate half an hour before boarding starts (which, with Ryanair, is about the time the plane lands from the previous flight. They have 25 mins to vaccuum, unload and load any luggage, clean up and replenish the galley.)